Traditionally, programming of broadcast and cable television and radio, including content (i.e., the video or audio program) and (the placement of) ads in a video or audio signal stream, has followed a linear model. Programming may be linear in the sense that a program begins and is streamed and in progress when a user chooses to view entertainment content. FIG. 1 illustrates a linear model for advertisement placement. Entertainment content 2, when processed as a digital data stream over a cable network, may be divided into a number of time intervals. The time intervals 4 include time reserved for a viewed program (content), such as “Golden Girls.” The intervals 6, 8, 9, represent sections of time reserved for advertisements or “avails.” These “avails” may be viewed as advertisement placement opportunities. As used herein, a “placement opportunity” was traditional called an avail and is sometimes referred to as a slot (spots into slots). A placement opportunity (PO) is a construct that represents an opportunity to insert an advertisement or entertainment content, and defines the rules for that opportunity, such as its duration, interactivity, ownership, and technical constraints.
In non-linear systems, such as Video-on-Demand (VOD), the intervals 6, 8, 9 may take on new meanings. The interval 6 is called a pre-roll, i.e., the space in a video that occurs immediately after a user clicks to start a VOD video. The interval 9 is known as a post-roll, i.e., the space after all of the VOD video segments have finished playing. The intervals 8 may be mid-rolls, i.e., mini-breaks in the middle of a VOD video, or may be interstitials, i.e., pod-like locations between consecutive VOD video segments. All of the intervals 6, 8, 9 in such play lists are ripe for the insertion of advertisements, i.e., advertisement placement opportunities.
On TV, the advertising network was formerly the national network, the cable network, or the cable operator. However, unlike the Internet, where browsers access/display content and then are separately “referred” to a shared ad network, the cable television infrastructure selects and assembles both the advertisement and the content together in the network and delivers the combined result to customers' “smart appliances” (e.g., Internet ready televisions, radios, smartphones, tablets, PCs, etc.).
Recently, smart appliances, such as Internet-ready televisions, have become capable of receiving content from Internet streaming services, such as Netflix movies, Pandora streaming radio, etc., over WiFi or direct Ethernet connections. When a user clicks on an icon for an “app” that appears on the television set corresponding to one of these services, the content is streamed to the smart appliance from a content delivery network (CDN) directly to the application running in the smart appliance without the need for a set top box.
A set top box may be configured to decode an analog representation of two states of a digital signal, as is known in the art, that is continuously streamed and pushed to the set top box through a broadcast facility over a coaxial or fiber optic cable and the set top box tunes to that channel and displays the content. When a user watches Internet-delivered program content, a browser within the smart appliance fetching video in predetermined time chunks—generally two sometimes three, sometimes ten second chunks. The fetched chunks of video are seamlessly stitched together dynamically in the app software and then displayed so as to appear as a smooth video on the smart appliance.
A Multiple System/Service Operator (MSO—a cable TV organization that owns more than one cable system and may prove broadband Internet service) may wish to rebroadcast video streams on smart appliances. Unfortunately, every connected device, including smart appliances, needs to obtain video in the format that it can consume. Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, etc., have very specific and incompatible formats. To overcome this problem, each of these companies has constructed facilities called content deliver networks (CDN) where a “set top box” for each channel is configured to receive broadcasts from satellites. A signal received by a “set top box” is fed to a transcoder to place the signal in a desired format and to fragment the formatted signal into the predetermined (e.g., 2 second) chunks of data. These chunks are then stored at a CDN on server farms located physically close to where the content is to be delivered.
To identify a particular channel data stream, including times when a program has ended and before the next program begins, i.e., a placement opportunity, a q-tone is inserted in the digital stream a predetermined time before the next program begins. An observer, which may be a transcoder, informs an ad server (ADS) of the arrival of the q-tone for subsequent placement of one or more ads into the channel data stream. The ad server, in turn, is waiting for the subsequent arrival of requests from CDNs to place ads into breaks in the data stream.
Unfortunately, requests may lead to congestion, dropped requests, and re-boots if the ad server is flooded with requests. This is particularly true of national-based television programming, where tens of thousands to millions of requests for ads may flood a single or a few ad servers substantially simultaneously.
Accordingly, what would be desirable, but has not yet been provided, is a method and system for accelerating advertising placement decisions in signal streams.